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Public Health Minister Anna Soubry caused a splash this week by apparently claiming, as The Times put it, that 'you can spot poor kids because they're fat'.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Ms Soubry said:
While international stories dominated the weekend front pages, the sums of money available to benefits claimants remained the hot domestic topic, and two Sunday papers added more fuel to the fire by claiming yesterday that "new figures" show that fraud in the welfare system has hit a record high.
It's safe to say the Independent's Voices column was of a different class this week. Commentator and stand-up comedian Mark Steel used his column inches to point out that:
"Ministers are expected to insist that at least nine in 10 people will be better off under the reforms." The Telegraph, January 13, 2012
After the campaign group Hacked Off this week published its draft 'Leveson Bill', the BBC reported something that might have suprised many of its readers:
"As well as MPs, organisations and private individuals are able to introduce Parliamentary bills."
According to some news aricles this week, South African women are deliberately drinking heavily in order to disable their unborn children, in order to claim relatively generous disability benefits.
As MPs prepare to vote over the Government's plans to cap rises to certain working age benefits and tax credits, newspapers and commentators have been circulating figures on who will be hit hardest as a result of the changes.
Today the BBC reports that the campaign group Hacked Off* has published the 'Leveson Bill' - a draft bill written up by Hacked Off's Chair Hugh Tomlinson QC.
2012 was the year that:
Kelvin MacKenzie berated lazy Northerners, alleging that the UK would have an economy like Ethopia's without London and the South East (actually, we'd be ranked with Canada or that BRIC powerhouse, India);
The Spectator told its readers that there was a qualification in "how to claim the dole" (something of an exaggeration);
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